The prior art does provide various disclosures directed at converting various resins such as starch or related materials into an injection molded or shaped article. For example, there are disclosures pertaining to the development of edible animal chews that are digestible and/or nutritious along with a texture that can be individually adjusted to suit a wide variety of a dog's preferences or needs. Attention is therefore directed to the following exemplary disclosures: U.S. Pat. No. 6,180,161 “Heat Modifiable Edible Dog Chew”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,159,516 “Method of Molding Edible Starch”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,126,978 “Edible Dog Chew”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,110,521 “Wheat and Casein Dog Chew with Modifiable Texture”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,093,441 “Heat Modifiable Peanut Dog Chew”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,093,427 “Vegetable Based Dog Chew”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,086,940 “High Starch Content Dog Chew”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,067,941 “Animal Chew”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,056,991 “Turkey and Rice Dog Chew With Modifiable Texture”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,941,197 “Carrot Based Dog Chew”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,827,565 “Process for Making an Edible Dog Chew”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,339,771 “Animal Chew Toy Containing Animal Meal”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,240,720 “Dog Chew with Modifiable Texture”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,200,212 “Dog Chew with Modifiable Texture.” Attention is also directed to U.S. Pat. No. 6,165,474 entitled “Application for Patent for Nutriceutical Toy”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,419,283 entitled “Animal Chew Toy of Starch Material and Degradable Ethylene Copolymer”, U.S. Application Publication No. 2004/0009268 entitled “Blends Of Starch And Aliphatic-Aromatic Based Polyester Resins” and U.S. Application Publication No. 2007/0031555 entitled “Direct Starch Molding”.
A variety of efforts have been considered to convert starch, with minimum degradation, into an injection molded product of a desired configuration. Such efforts have focused on the use of propylene glycol, fatty acid esters, alkali salts of protein material and/or water as a starch additive, followed by melt processing techniques such as extrusion and/or injection molding. The cited art generally is directed at extruding a product having uniform dimensions and injection molding that extruded composition to form more complex three dimensional shapes. A need exists for shaped articles that can be produced by extrusion alone and not incur the expense of matched tooling or the associated relatively slower injection molding process.
Accordingly, the present invention is directed at formulating edible compositions for an animal, along with selected processing/molding profiles, which formulations and processing/molding profiles allow for the continuous formation of an edible-based animal chew toy of a desired shape. In addition, it is also an object of this invention to provide a number of processing devices or protocols which may be used in a continuous extrusion process to produce a non-uniform, three dimensional shape product for consumption by an animal.